What is profinet control?

What is profinet for the cead group pellet extruder family?

PROFINET is a real-time Industrial Ethernet standard that is used for automation and control applications in industrial environments. It allows for communication between machines and devices within a factory automation system, providing a high-speed, deterministic, and reliable network for data exchange.

What are the advantages of Profinet?

The advantages of connecting a machine with PROFINET to another machine are numerous. Here are a few examples:

Full control over your pellet extruder. Profinet control allows you to have full control over your extruder. For example: setting and reading the temperatures, being able to read the torque and screw speed. A full list is provided later in this article.
High-speed communication: PROFINET provides fast and reliable communication between machines, enabling real-time control and monitoring of processes.
Scalability: PROFINET is a highly scalable network that can be easily expanded as the number of devices in the system increases.
Flexibility: PROFINET is a flexible network that can be easily configured to meet the specific needs of a particular application.
Reduced wiring: PROFINET can help reduce the amount of wiring required in an industrial environment, as multiple devices can be connected to the same network.
Improved diagnostics: PROFINET provides improved diagnostics capabilities, making it easier to identify and diagnose issues in the system.

What can you control with Profinet for controlling pellet extruders from cead?

The stand alone pellet extruder for large format 3D printing by CEAD. Have many control options build in. The extruder comes with a control cabinet which we call the "base unit". The base unit houses an industrial PLC system, for controlling and reading all needed actuators, heaters and sensors.

When you decide to control the extruder system through profinet control (analogue control is easier and also possible), then the extruder with control cabinet become a "slave" of your PLC system.

Internally, the base unit will still handle all needed operations, suchs as the PID controls of the heaters. Or how we control our material (pellet) feeding system. However, by controlling the base unit and extruder with profinet, the user gets a lot of information back from the system and also has some options in terms of controlling the pellet extruder.

Heaters: The user can use their own system to set the set points of the heaters. The internal PID control is still taken care of by the base unit. However, a customer might want to be able to change the heater settings during printing. The profinet control would allow for this.

Start, Stop, RPM: The start, stop and speed of the extruder can be set by the profinet control. Another way of doing this would be by analogue and digital signals. Analogue would be providing a 0-10V signal or 4-20mA signal. With digital signals to enable the extruder and start. Both ways, profinet and analogue are very effective and give you a lot of control.

Getting data back: The interesting thing about profinet control. Is that you can receive all kinds of data back from the system. For instance you can read the set point of the temperatures. But you can also read what the actual temperatures of all the differente heat zones of your pellet extruder are. You can read the actual RPM of your extruder, not just the set point. You even get feedback about the torque that is currently present on your screw from the pellet extruder during printing. All of this data will become available to the user through profinet control, this would not be possible with the analogue control.

How does it work?

As mentioned before, in order to set up the profinet control, you are going to need a "master plc" that is going to tell the base unit and pellet extruder from CEAD, what to do.

It is quite often to have for instance a master plc, that gives controls to an industrial robot or milling machine, and in parallel to the cead pellet extruder. This allows for advanced control in large format 3D printing.

The master plc is connected to the base unit with a profinet cable. In essence this is an industrial internet cable. This is the only connection needed when using profinet control, making the wiring very easy.

From cead, upon the purchase of your system, you will receive a ".GSD" and a ".UDT" file. .GSD, This allows you to upload our pellet extruder system right away in your PLC program and perform the I/O address mapping. Allowing you to control the extruder with your own plc programs.

Documentation and integration of profinet control.

Exact documentation and manuals, will be received upon the delivery of your system. Besides that, we have some very experienced engineers that can answer any questions you might have. Upon the purchase of our pellet extruders for large format 3D printing, we do recommend to hire an integrator or have someone in your company experienced with PLC programming. If that would be challenging, let us know and please ask for our services. We have a wide network and we have a lot of experience ourselves.

Conclusion

Overall, PROFINET provides a reliable and efficient means of connecting machines in an industrial automation system, improving productivity and reducing downtime. Allowing you for advanced control of your pellet extruder. Do not forget, if this sounds a bit to difficult, contact us for help or realize that analogue control is possible as well!